Pfizer to vaccinate entire city in Brazil in study

In the city of Toledo in southwestern Brazil, you won’t find much vaccine skepticism. About 98 percent of eligible residents have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, city officials say.

Most received the vaccine offered by Pfizer, and this week the drugmaker said there was an opportunity: Pfizer announced that he would fully immunize all city residents over the age of 12 to conduct a study of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. vaccine.

The company will work with local health authorities, a hospital, a university and Brazil’s national immunization program to monitor transmission of the coronavirus. in a “real life setting” after the entire population has been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech serum, Pfizer said. .

The study will follow participants for up to one year to determine how long the protection lasts vaccine against Covid-19 and new variants of the virus.

To study

“Here we believe in science and we regret the nearly 600,000 deaths due to Covid-19 in Brazil, ”said Mayor Beto Lunitti of Toledo, announcing the Pfizer study.

The study comes after the experimental inoculation of almost all adults in the town of Serrana, in southeastern Brazil. The experiment was considered the first such mass trial in which an entire city was vaccinated against the coronavirus before the rest of the country.

The experiment in Serrana was carried out for three months in winter and spring. Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine was tested in the city of 45,000 inhabitants. It was a resounding success, with a sharp drop in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, at a time when the rest of Brazil was in the grip of the pandemic.

The dead

Brazil has suffered one of the highest death rates in the world from the pandemic. Around 600,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Brazil, according to a database from the New York Times. Although many experts believe the actual death toll may be higher, it is the second highest death toll in the world. Over 710,000 Americans have died.

The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was ambivalent about the importance of vaccines. Many Brazilians have expressed anger at the slowness with which their government procured vaccines and the corruption scandal involving vaccine deals.

The New York Times